


A Study in Reintegration

by patternofdefiance



Series: STATIC [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Augmentation, Developing Relationship, Discrimination, FINALLY GOT THE TAGS and RATING FIXED OMG, FutureLock, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Pre-Slash, cyborg, social stigma, soon to be podfic'd by consultingsmartarse, unlikely firendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2013-04-12
Packaged: 2017-12-07 06:57:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 10,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/745621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patternofdefiance/pseuds/patternofdefiance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The stigma against human augmentation has never lifted – not after the initial kinks in the operating software and hardware integrations resulted in some curious physical and personality…defects. Despite the lives it’s subsequently saved, the tests the procedures have passed, and the unending barrage of PR stunts and ad campaigns.</p><p>None of that matters – God, the papers still refer to the riots – which had been in protest against the expense of post-op care and maintenance – as the ‘Rise of the Machines.’</p><p>John had just been a kid at Uni when it all happened, hadn’t really been arsed to care, and then he’d swanned off to join the army. Somewhere in that time the landscape had changed, and the first recipients of botched augmentations had stopped being victims and become something altogether more sinister.</p><p>And all the while, science had marched on, blissfully ignorant – or at least willfully so – continuing to innovate and improve.</p><p>And then John had gone and got himself shot, and science had taken him in like an overbearing mother, like a charity case, and hadn’t taken ‘no’ for an answer, hadn’t wanted ‘no’ for an answer – </p><p>And John hadn’t wanted to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Study in Should

**Author's Note:**

> This universe is taking over my brain, so eventually this will be a series. Parts will be quite, graphically violent. Other parts will involve explicit sex. Authors notes will contain chapter-specific warnings...
> 
> This bit has neither of those.
> 
> (fair warning: this is all un-beta'd. if there are errors, let me know, and I will gladly correct them!)

When they fix the prosthetic to John’s stump, when the auto-fit seal takes and the electro-impulse relays sync up, it’s like he has a real leg again. One that buzzes in his awareness, one that pings his kinesthesia forty waves a second, but it can stand, it can walk, it can _run_. (Well, it could if, well… It _could_.)

Who cares if people look at him sideways when they find out? Who cares if they look away when they _see_ … John can feel useful again. Not that he does, but the potential is there, at any rate.

Besides, it’s not like the leg is the worst of it. It’s not like the rest of him is untainted, unchanged.

The bullet that sent him home took a chunk for a keepsake, ripped out his aortic assembly, barely left half his heart functioning. Just a few years ago, that would have been a death sentence. Just a rank below ‘Captain,’ it still is.

But the nano-foam, the stasis gel…and then he’d been hooked up, iron heart pushing life through his veins. Life enough for him to choose – to choose life at any cost, a life that meant months of tubes and machines and wires, hours under the knife, moments he’ll never forget, lodged _,_ _logged_ in his memory –

And to emerge from it all still broken.

To have phantom pain in the age of science, with the shattered reflections of his past catching at the corners of his eyes and his steps.

And then there are the papers and people and ink charting his progress or lack thereof. Like the pain in his leg, like the ache in his chest, the Rorschach splatter of days gone by clouds his vision and his presence. It’s like civilians have special radar just for spotting his level of _damaged_.

Damaged means _dangerous_ , after all.

So Stamford comes as a complete surprise – oblivious to John’s discomfort, oblivious to his cagey, edgy acceptance of coffee. There are other things to do that day – places to go, mirrors to avoid. He still hasn’t gotten up the nerve to stand naked in front of his own bathroom mirror. The leg… his shoulder…

This body of his, made whole, and it seems John himself is the fly in the ointment, twitchy, clumsy with a limp that can’t – shouldn't – possibly exist.

John should be at home, practicing the calming exercises his therapist had prescribed – or at least trying out some of the neural-to-electro-impulse interfacing techniques his doctor has mandated. He should be trying to fix himself, his life, his _condition_ , putting in the same amount of effort everyone else already has.

John should be looking for a new flat.

Instead he’s complaining to Mike, and Mike, bless him, just smiles and laughs, and bemoans his own mundane fate, and doesn’t even glance at John’s implant scarring by his shirt collar, which is by far the _kindest_ way someone has looked at him in days.

It’s a pity the kindness is unwanted – but the companionship, even if just for a brief cuppa, well… John will put up with a lot of odd non-looks for a bit of conversation he isn’t being charged for.

“Funny,” Mike says as they get to talking about living arrangements and the preferences of hypotheticals. “You’re the second person to say that to me today.”


	2. A Study in Rust

Later he’ll go back and review his first impressions of Sherlock Holmes. He’ll think about the tall, arrogant man with his blank and pale canvas of a face. He’ll remember the color of his eyes, and wonder briefly if they’re implants and then discard the idea. The man is too proud of what he sees with them for those orbs to be anything but his own flesh and essence.

No, what John notices right in that moment is how Sherlock looks at every part of him, his regard even touching upon John’s implant scarring, sliding down to take in the incongruity of the cane beside the leg that shouldn’t need it. He sees it all, and simply accepts it, more interested in parsing out the history of _John before_ than making the uncomfortable fact of _John now_ politically correct or societally palatable.

John doesn’t quite know what to do with that. Even his therapist had tried to get him to even out and _fit in_ , had suggested classes on how to interact with civilians – not because he had been a soldier, but because he is now augmented, and therefor something disturbing, something unsettling. God forbid the civilians he got shot protecting should feel any _discomfort_.

He’d attended those classes, too, when he’d first arrived in London – re-learned to swing his arms when he walked, to settle his weight to one hip when standing, to add life to the buzzing metal his body now included. Learned to wear ‘normal’ and ‘soft’ and ‘harmless’ like shirt, trousers, and shoes.

Sherlock brushes past all that, seeing through the ruse in place for his own comfort, and asks John, ‘Afghanistan or Iraq?’ and then even more blithely asks how much of his leg had been replaced.

Stamford’s _face_.

Even Stamford, trained surgeon, experienced teacher, long ago friend _Stamford_ hadn’t noticed the leg. Admittedly, the cane, while necessary, is a great disguise. People assume he’s had a small bit of work done with his shoulder – but the major overhaul on his leg upsets people. ‘Upset’ isn’t the right word, though, is it?

And the mad man just keeps noticing things about John, small details and big secrets, and it all rolls off his tongue with the same level of importance, the same tone of nonchalance, the same indifference. It isn’t that this man isn’t afraid of him, of what he is – he simply doesn’t care.

It’s so god damn refreshing that John actually goes to the address at the appointed time.

He sits at home in his box of an army-provided flat all day most days and can’t make his therapy sessions on time, but he’s at 221B Baker Street at seven o’clock on the dot.

There’s a skull on the mantle and a mess all over – and he can’t be sure, but he thinks the not-housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson, is under the impression he and Sherlock are – well…

John puts end to that thought, and Mrs. Hudson’s assumption, right there and then. Augmented ex-useful wrecks don’t have… _relationships_. The best he can hope for has already happened: this impossible man is considering sharing a flat with him, and Mike Stamford didn’t judge him for the leg.

That’s about as good as interactions get after you’re more than man and less than human. The stigma against human augmentation has never lifted – not after the initial kinks in the operating software and hardware integrations resulted in some curious physical and personality… _defects._ Despite the lives it’s subsequently saved, the tests the procedures have passed, and the unending barrage of PR stunts and ad campaigns.

None of that matters – God, the papers still refer to the riots – which had been in protest against the expense of post-op care and maintenance – as the ‘Rise of the Machines.’

John had just been a kid at Uni when it all happened, hadn’t really been arsed to care, and then he’d swanned off to join the army. Somewhere in that time the landscape had changed, and the first recipients of botched augmentations had stopped being victims and become something altogether more sinister.

And all the while, science had marched on, blissfully ignorant – or at least willfully so – continuing to innovate and improve.

And then John had gone and got himself shot, and science had taken him in like an overbearing mother, like a charity case, and hadn’t taken ‘no’ for an answer, hadn’t _wanted_ ‘no’ for an answer –

And John hadn’t wanted to die.

 _Please, God, let me live_ – but it wasn’t up to God anymore, was it?

He hadn’t been sure about life as a – a – a whatever he was now, but he had known he didn’t want to die. Anything but that. Even this. _Please, Science, don’t let me die…_

And ‘this’ looks like it might include a lovely flat, an interesting-at-the-very-least flatmate, and maybe – just maybe – a reason to wake up and boot up his mind and body every day.

But then, there in 221B, just as John has taken a seat, is thinking life might be just slightly less empty, in a swirl of importance and (psychotic?) euphoria, Sherlock is gone, off chasing – suicides, was it?

“Damn my leg!”

For a moment, John is caught up on what this life will be like – watching the world around him dance and careen around him while he sits by and _rusts_ –

“You’re a doctor.” Just as suddenly, Sherlock is back, regarding him with steady eyes. John can feel his gaze like electric interference across his skin, in his retinas. “In fact, you’re an army doctor…”

“Yes.” Well, he _had_ been – not sure if anyone would want to hire him on now, though…

“Any good?”

“Very good.”

“Seen a lot of injuries, then. Violent deaths.”

“Well, yes.” John isn’t sure where this is going, and Sherlock moves through this bizarre interrogation too quickly for him to guess the endgame, to plan for the final outcome.

“Bit of trouble, too, I bet,” and here Sherlock’s lips quirk as his eyes snag again on John’s scarring and his cane before taking in his hands and finally his face.

“Of course. Yes. Enough for a lifetime.” John recalls the classes. He starts to sink into his civilian camouflage. “Far too much.”

The smile – and it is a smile – tugs at the corners of Sherlock’s mouth. “Want to see some more?”

Conversation mapping and subject avoidance techniques never planned for Sherlock Holmes.

“Oh god, yes.”


	3. A Study in Questions

“You have questions,” the madman had said, and nothing describes John as exactly as that sentence, that utterance of assertion. That invitation.

John had questions – before the army, before the war, before the bullet.

John will have questions, will always need to know something. There’s a hole in John Watson, and maybe the next answer will fill it up like spackle, top it off like a pint, plug in like a USB and _complete_ –

John has questions. None of which he’s going to ask this whirling dervish of a man. Questions like, why are you talking to me? How are you ok with this? How are you even looking at me right now, knowing what you know?

Instead he asks the safer questions, has the safer conversation – about Harry, who is a drunk, but more importantly has held a _fucking funeral_ for her little brother and refuses to talk to him. Because she’s a purist when it comes to the fine line between saving lives and playing god. Because, to her, he’s dead, doesn’t count, can’t be the partner in mischief from a shared childhood of trouble, can’t be the man that bailed her out during Uni, will never be the friend who introduced her to the life and wife she’s slowly destroyed with drinking.

As far as she’s concerned, John died, drowned in blood and sun and orders in Afghanistan.

Sherlock thinks the phone means she wants to stay in touch, but Harry gave him the phone as a way to rid herself of Clara and of him. She neglected to program it with her new number, after all.

Aside from Harry, the (definitely not amateur) detective is spot on.

It’s amazing.

John has seen augmented brains and sense work through complicated processes before (as a doctor and a surgeon and a Captain, he has seen a lot in his time), but he has never seen such _organic_ genius. If anything, this outshines the crafted intellects he’d seen in action, Sherlock’s deductions growing from clues to conclusions like plants from fertile soil to sun, only faster, blindingly fast, actually -

He finds himself breathless with it, with this man who doesn’t seem to care but preens under John’s admiration all the same.

The crime scene is another matter.

For all that Sherlock treats them like fools, John can feel Donovan’s gaze linger on his back – whether she sees the scarring in the evening light or the stiffness of his (poorly) integrated leg assembly, it doesn’t matter.

John is failing at his primary objective, which for the rest of his life will be to _fit in_.

“What am I doing here?” he asks the room, the pale figure beside him, the body prone beneath him, and himself for good measure.

If John is full of questions, it seems Sherlock is full of points to prove, and when he’s dazzled the room, the body, and John (and the hapless Detective Inspector – Lestrade, was it?) he’s off in a flair of coat and flurry of limbs, having proven his point.

John finds himself left behind, bringing up the rear in a spectacularly terrible fashion, limping across the finish line – all things he’d never done before. Captain Watson had been a point man, had done everything in his life up until now with a calm and dedicated edge, had finished strong.

Donovan looks him over as she lifts the do-not-cross tape. She narrows her eyes.

 _Here it comes,_ John thinks, bracing for the judgement and the scorn and the disgust.

Dear Sally Donovan _warns_ him then, cautions him against associating with the psychopath. “Stay away from Sherlock Holmes,” she says.

And John swallows his surprise and his disbelief. Donovan doesn’t know him – doesn’t know the wounds he closed and opened overseas, doesn’t know the strength or steadiness of his hands _then_ , and apparently cannot see the built-in danger of John _now_.

He leaves then, aided by the cane – aided by the mobility it offers as well as the camouflage it provides – and hating it every step of the way.


	4. A Study in What Goes Unsaid

John knows he’s forgetting things, important things, like how to be afraid. Or, at least, how to give the impression – fear was never his modus operandi, and he thinks it may be a little late in the game to incorporate it.

Caution is a different beast, and he’s lived with this gentler, tamer breed of fear for his entire life, like the family dog, like his parents’ drinking, like his height. It has become a facet and a factor of his essence. It is at once a detriment and an advantage, and John has gotten so very good at acting on the silver lining.

But John is different now, and where his (seeming) lack of fear, his careful cultivation of caution, his calm and steady demeanor served him well in the operating room, at the front line, ankle deep in someone else’s blood, _now_ , _here_ , on the wrong side of _different_ , his disposition can only inspire distrust.

He’d heard the nurses talk about it, about the patients in their care ‘turning cold’ – switching off where normal emotional responses were concerned. Apparently fear was the first casualty – apparently, the realization that part of your body was made of sterner stuff could spawn delusions of immortality.

As a doctor and a surgeon, John had read the data, studied the reports. John knew better than most of his after-care staff what lay in store for him. He knew about the decreased life expectancy – not because of complications with the implants, but because of social and psychological factors.

Suicide is the number one killer of augmentation recipients. Apparently being seen as less than human is unhealthy at a primal level. Then again, the ones who ‘turned cold,’ who felt increasingly super-human, who left their mortality behind…those were the ones with the shortest life expectancies.

Apparently feeling _more_ than human is even more destructive.

One day John had heard his nurses talking about him, and the youngest (newest) had said, “He’s turned cold so fast,” and the older (more experienced) one had replied with a shake of the head, “He went in that way. There’s no telling what will come of it.”

All this and more flashes through John’s mind as the car that has abducted him slows to a halt in an empty warehouse.

John knows he is forgetting important things, like how to act scared, and the man in front of him is quick to notice.

What John is not forgetting, is how to be angry. He’s not even bothering to hide it, after a day of rust and questions and bringing up the rear and _being warned away_ from the only person who has bothered to look at John and see more than what was expected or feared or convenient –

And this man, now, with his umbrella and his suit and his smile, wearing all three the way John wears his cane and his politeness and his _new_ carefulness right next to the old – well… John isn’t sure if he’s turning cold, or he would never have feared this man, or if maybe he was _born_ cold.

“You don’t seem very afraid,” the man says, and John has been in enough debriefings with hated superiors to hear what isn’t being said.

“You don’t seem very frightening,” he retorts, so carefully not saying so many things. He doesn’t need to address the threat in the man’s smile, in the same way he doesn’t have to mention the unregistered, illegal hand gun he still cleans every night.

The smile hardens the man’s face, as if something slick and oily has frozen in a parody of human expression. “The statistics aren’t very kind – I wonder how long you will last?” He pulls out a notebook, consults it. He _tuts_ and shakes his head as he turns the pages. “Not very promising start,” he murmurs, eyes glancing up to meet John’s and chill him to the bone.

John feels something inside him shift, like ice forming, like molecules realigning into brittle impermeability. The man watches him, unblinking, seemingly fascinated by and indifferent to the subtle change.

“Do you plan to continue your association with Sherlock Holmes?”

“I could be wrong, but I think that’s none of your business.” There’s an ache building in the shoulder, where flesh meets fibre-wire and poly-mesh. His leg is humming in dissonance with the rest of his body, a buzzing, alien protrusion in his awareness.

It isn’t long before the offer arrives – information for money, and John is surprised that he isn’t surprised by it at all. He feels like he’s home, like he’s miles away from city and civilian drear and staring the faraway glint of a sniper’s regard in the eye.

He can feel the sand beneath his feet, like a decision that needs to be made, and John makes it _at_ this man with his suit and his smile and his tapping umbrella.

“You’re very loyal, very quickly,” the man points out, and his indulgent tone, his superior carriage irks John and makes him want to disagree with everything about him, from his words to his tone to his very existence.

“No, I’m not.” It is John Watson’s truth, and he speaks it into the strange silence of the warehouse, the emptiness of the air it holds.

The man smiles. “I imagine people have already warned you to stay away from him, but I can see from your left hand that’s not going to happen.”

Anger flares inside John, like a flashbang, and when the man reaches for his hand, John clamps down on the urge to lash out at him. This man is talking about the battlefield, as if he’s been there, as if he’s felt the blaze of fresh blood against his skin, followed by the slow cooling, the growing stickiness, the _departure_ of –

Something inside John is heating and cooling, tempering like metal –

“You’re not haunted by the war, Doctor Watson… you miss it.”

It feels like the reverse of a panic attack, like there’s too much air, too much oxygen in his blood, in his brain. John looks up to meet the man’s eyes in the sudden silence, almost thrown off balance by the calm inside his body, his _whole_ body.

“Welcome back.”


	5. A Study in Reasons

John’s left hand trembles and his leg aches. That’s just how it is, now.

It starts when he sits up in bed, when his mind catches up with _where_ and _when_ he is waking up. (He’s waking up on _this_ _side_ of the war).

To still his hand, he clenches it, crushes his muscles and tendons into a fist. Sometimes he wakes with half-circles cut into his palm as he grips his rifle in his dreams, or the armor of some downed soldier, some dying boy he’s dragging to a cleaner patch of desert, the only operating floor he’s accorded –

To calm his leg, to placate its buzzing, he uses the cane and treats it like a visitor, an unlooked for (unwanted? Surely not – the other option would have been – ) houseguest, standing on ceremony, polite and self-sacrificing –

There’s another trick that works, that calms his hand and his leg, his body and his thoughts, his waking and his dreaming.

John holds a piece of himself at night, sits down and cleans his remnant of the war, the only one he chose, the one no one (no one?) knows about.

These are the reasons John grips the gun, cleans the gun, _keeps_ the gun –

It’s… an option. An option no one knows about (an option _everyone_ expects).

But tonight, with what was not said in the warehouse still ringing in his ears, when John moves through the box that stored him until Regent’s Park, until Mike, until the mad man, when he moves through it like a shadow made solid with purpose, John wraps sure fingers around the gun, motivated by something entirely new.

He’s not sure yet (a life of caution precludes it), but the Browning feels less like a means to an end tonight, and more like – well. Like not _the_ end. He slides the gun home, against the skin of the small of his back, and it feels warm, like living steel, and John already has some of that, but this has always been _his_ by god.

And it’s something he’ll keep even if the reasons are changing.


	6. A Study in Dinner

_He said ‘dangerous,’ and here I am,_ John thinks, sitting down to dinner with the mad man. The candle, when it arrives, is nearly too much. John feels like laughing or smashing the candle or just standing up and walking away – wait, no he doesn’t. But he is finding it difficult to breathe – there’s a tightness in his throat and chest.

For a moment, he feels unfamiliar fear blossom like frost in his gut.

What is wrong with him? He’s barely met the man, and now he’s handling cadavers and being abducted – not to mention texting murderers and actively trying to seek out some one-on-one time with them.

It’s like being caught in undertow, in the ripping tide. John should stick close to the shore, should be trying to extricate himself –

That little lick of fear kindles into a warmth in his belly, flickers into desert sun.

John finds he can breathe and set his cane to the side, can turn a menu page without it broadcasting his nerves with papery rattles.

They order – or rather, John orders. Sherlock seems intent to stare out the window or at John in equal measures, at once captivated and disinterested. John frowns as he tries to recall why that seems so familiar to him, but Sherlock notices the frown and makes eye contact.

“What?” John finally asks, breaking the awkwardly intense stare.

Sherlock’s eyes narrow as he regards John. “It’s nothing.”

“Like hell,” John snorts. He reaches for his wine glass and takes a sip. Sherlock watches each movement. John raises his eyebrows at him. “Oh for god’s sake…are you going to ask me or not?”

“Ask you what?” Sherlock almost-sneers. “I don’t need to ask you anything – I can deduce it just by looking.”

“Alright, then.” John smiles briefly, and takes another sip of wine, locking eyes with Sherlock as he does, challenging. Sherlock looks away.

John may not know from a moment’s glance when a lady in pink has been unhappily married for over a decade, but he has experience enough with the looks people give him these days to know that Sherlock is dying to ask about his augmentations. Specifically, how food fits into the equation.

See, rationally, it shouldn’t be such an issue – after all, over 70% of John’s form is still organic, home-grown, belly-fed flesh. He has to eat to maintain his physical strength, stamina, and vitality.

Just under 30% of his body is more complicated, however – it is kept ‘live’ by John’s body heat, along with a rather complicated metabolic link-up procedure that is still technically being tested. Older models have external power sources, or need to be kept in charge, or require lengthy replacement and repair ops.

Not so with John – his body has always run a little hot, his metabolism has always run a little fast, and this new power sourcing procedure has simply taken advantage of those attributes. He’s aware that, occasionally, he’ll need to see a technician for manual adjustment – the hardware, while sturdy, is nowhere near as advanced as the old-as-evolution system of checks and repairs and tweaks the human body has acquired across the span of its own lifetime, never mind all the lifetimes that came before.

For instance, John’s right leg and foot, with muscles and nerves and fascia intact, will make a million little changes regarding his posture and his habits and his movements day to day. Over time, those little systems map and accommodate his motions, yet ever able to change.

Not so with the cyberthetic. It ‘talks’ to John’s central nervous system, uploading and downloading data packets 40 times a second, at the supposed frame rate of reality as interpreted by the brain. John’s not so sure the neurosurgeons and programmers are as clever as they think they are – all he knows is that the connection between his body and _his_ leg is seamless – which is very much not the case where his cyberthetic is concerned.

Still, his body can give the leg’s interface access to the data from his real leg, allowing it to mirror-impose necessary adjustments – but the process has not been…as successful as was first anticipated.

For instance, John needs a cane.

His programmer-doctor-surgeon has a million theories why this is so, and none of them are helpful. The latest concerns the body’s inherent dislike of the symmetry imposed by the data sharing; he postulates that human bodies tend away from this exact sort of balance - but it’s not as if the software or even the root code exists to change any of that.

So that is that.

John was snatched from death and disability by the best gadgetry money and over-eager science could provide, and is now even under a bloody manufacturer’s guarantee –

But he still needs a cane, and he still has to deal with a society that finds his existence uncomfortable – and now, it seems he has a potential flatmate who is just as potentially insane (definitely hazardous) with an unspoken curiosity regarding John.

John lifts his wineglass out of the way as the server (Billy, was it?) sets down his ravioli, mutters “Ta, very much,” and raises his eyebrows at his own introspection. Life, currently, could be worse – he could have an enemy like that slick man with the umbrella.

In fact, seeing how that meeting went, he probably _does_.

Sherlock, John decides, will probably overcome whatever, highly selective sense of decency is keeping him from asking about John’s flesh-to-implant interfaces. Sooner, rather than later, judging by his twitchy nature.

For now, John has his own questions, with regards to arch enemies.


	7. A Study in Following

Something about Sherlock makes John feel like he’s reading along with someone who is much better and much faster at it than he is, and they are turning the pages before he’s caught up and ready.

For example:

Suddenly, they are running – although it would be truer to say that Sherlock is running, and John is doing his best to keep up. It’s something to do with a cab Sherlock spied through Angelo’s window, with the passenger to be precise, and it’s somehow vital that they catch up, and on foot no less –

Quite unexpectedly, they are above the street, fire escapes and rickety roof-ways rattling beneath their weight, and it is almost, _almost_ enough to make John forget the conversation that preceded.

(Later, later he’ll remember the awkward and uncomfortable and _confusing_ conversation. How could such an observant man – albeit mad – have mistaken John’s queries for advances? How could he not know that aside from sexuality and gender, and a lofty number of other factors, the real and overbearing reason that John wouldn’t – couldn’t – shouldn’t – well…

What was the old saying? _Steel_ and _real_ don’t mix?

That’s the one.)

But for now, with ancient metal swaying and buckling beneath John’s not-inconsiderable bulk, his steps chasing Sherlock’s across roofing tile and gutter gaps, for now John can forget the clumsy talk and his lumbering self and chase after a target. _Pursue an objective._

There’s hardly room in their crazed scramble for John to keep track of the math regarding his leg – just as he manages to get a grip on how to finagle a particular result from the limb, his surroundings and the need for inelegant speed overwhelm his efforts.

A break between buildings looms before him, and John skids to a halt, pulse roaring in his ears, oxygen crashing like tidal waves inside his lungs and arteries. The jump is daunting, and John finds himself unsure, not of his body or his cyberthetic, but of their ability to cooperate.

“Come on, John, we’re _losing_ him!”

John has heard those words before, and in that tone, a thousand, thousand times. He hears those words in his sleep, in his dreams, in his nightmares. Those words are sand and blood and training and real life and the end and –

Those words reach inside John and pour the ichor of adrenaline into every cell.

John was a surgeon, and John was a soldier – and army doctors, the very good ones, have exactly one response to those words: calm, unshaking focus.

John is leaping, clearing the gap before he can compute it –

John is landing, John is following, right behind the lunatic flutter of Sherlock’s coat –

Following like this requires no thought, no plan, just stimulus and response, just adrenaline and a high and steady pulse. He once had those in spades, and now, thrillingly, John finds this is till true.

John feels he is flying, soaring, sinking, drowning, rushing along at great and terrible speed, unfettered and unafraid.

He’s just far enough behind Sherlock, still finding his footing in this mad dash, that he arrives in time for Sherlock to shake his head and say “No.”

Not their man. (Their?)

“LA, Santa Monica, just arrived,” Sherlock rattles off his observations.

“How,” John pants, “can you _possibly_ know that?” There are other questions waiting to be asked, but they can keep on waiting. Something is _off_ inside John, but he can’t focus on that right now, not while Sherlock is flashing a pilfered badge and impersonating an officer of the law.

“Welcome to London,” the infuriating man says, and the cabbie rescues his passenger from Sherlock’s dissecting gaze.

“So.” His lungs haven’t worked this hard in…months? “ _Not_ the murderer.”

“Not the murderer, no.” Sherlock grimaces, merely breathing a touch heavily.

John raises his eyebrows, cocks his head. “Wrong country: good alibi.” He must be getting his breath back, because the hilarity of all this is threatening to come crashing down. To distract himself, he snags the badge from Sherlock’s grasp, pleasantly surprised by the fluidity of the movement. “Detective Inspector Lestrade?”

Sherlock gives a small grin. “I pickpocket him when he’s annoying. You can keep that one, I’ve got plenty at the flat.”

John nearly manages it – but then his shoulders are shaking, and the mirth he was trying to subdue escapes, albeit quietly. His shoulder twinges, not in pain, but at the newness of the movement, and John realizes it’s the first time since his operation that he’s laughed – can that be right? The thought would be sobering if he wasn’t full of endorphins from the unexpected dash across London.

“What?” Sherlock seems wary.

“Nothing,” John chuckles, “just, _‘Welcome to London.’_ ”

Sherlock, after a moment’s hesitation, joins in with a soft laugh, but it’s short lived. Down the road a way, they are getting looks that mean trouble – from errant cop and peeved passenger alike. “Got your breath back?” he asks, and John is taken aback again by how normal and uncommon that question and concern is.

He shrugs his shoulder, letting the metal and the muscle loosen and resettle after the strangeness of the laughter. “Ready when you are.”


	8. A Study in Skin

It happens quite accidentally – after laughing, after starting to think, yes, yes he can make a life or at least a semblance of it here, in this chaos explosion that is the blast radius of Sherlock Holmes, that is 221B and chasing leads through the night paths of London –

After being handed his cane by a smiling Angelo, after the implosion of realization (I ran. I ran I ran _I ran_ and it was easy like breathing, easy like _falling_ ), after rushing upstairs, carrying the cane, sullen and useless in his hand, their roles reversed –

It happens quite accidentally that Sally sees John’s implant scarring, at the crook of neck and shoulder (clothes disheveled from running from laughing, from careless removal of coat, careless, _careless_ , John is failing spectacularly at his primary objective) where his shirt collar has shifted to reveal the skin.

Well, it’s _called_ skin.

The seam between flesh and not-flesh is not puckered, not ugly, not even particularly noticeable. It resembles circuitry, because in a sense it is – fibrewires and nerve interfaces and conducting mesh packed in layers, attached to and embraced by John’s own epidermal layers.

The texture of it is raised, like an intricate scarification, and the colour of it is pale, just like an old scar. (John remembers when it was red and blue and purple and yellow with bruising and anger, body and mind rebelling at the cold invasion of science. He remembers the fevered feel of his first touch, how inflamed and incensed he’d been. There had been no hiding his _condition_ then.)

“Oh my god, did you know?” Sally rounds on Sherlock, who seems momentarily confused by the question.

“What?” Sally’s holding a jar of what appears to be eyeballs, and Sherlock’s eyes flicker down at the jar, then up to check her current line of sight, following it to John’s _skin_. He snorts, flaps his hand at her look of concern. “Oh, _that_. Of course.”

Sally’s mouth drops open. “You can’t – even _you_ – ”

“What’s all this – keep looking, you lot.” Lestrade moseys over, just as Anderson whips around to stare at John. “What’s going on here?”

Sally curls a lip and jerks her head at John. “Look.”

Lestrade glances at John, then looks more closely, his hand extending almost unconsciously to touch – he jerks back as if burned. “Jesus,” he murmurs, his eyes catching on the scarring, then slowly moving up to meet John’s hard stare.

John clenches his left fist, preparing for – for what? Tension and nerves and a slow anger are heating him from inside, like coals, or maybe it’s bigger, like a forest fire, and everything is swirling together, but John is trying his best to keep a hold of it, of himself. It feels like the slow charge that was gradually fed into his body to seal the bond between cyberthetics and organic matter, all those months ago. John almost shivers at the sensation, at the memory – a memory he’s _not supposed to have_ , according to everyone, god he has so _many_ of those –

Lestrade stares at John for a long count, and perhaps he sees something in John’s expression, because then he’s exhaling loudly and looking away. “Jesus,” he says again, louder this time, with a nervous laugh at the end. “Anderson, Donovan, get back to it. That wasn’t a suggestion,” he preempts as they both open their mouths to argue. They turn away to continue their work, but John doesn’t miss Sally’s wariness or Anderson’s open disgust.

Lestrade turns to Sherlock. “Well?” he asks quietly.

Sherlock snaps back to reality. “Well what?”

“Sherlock…”

The insufferable man sneers. Lestrade glances John’s way before tightening his jaw and crowding into Sherlock’s space. “Help us – properly, and I’ll stand my team down.” His eyes flicker towards John again.

Sherlock snaps, “This is childish!”

Lestrade snorts. “Well, I’m dealing with a child.” He grimaces. “This is our case - I’m letting you in, but you do _not_ go off on your own. Clear?”

There’s a ringing in John’s ears and a buzzing in his bones. For a moment he cannot tell the difference between the metal ones and the ones he grew himself – every fibre of his being is charged with – with –

Whatever it was, John manages to overcome it, letting it drain away as Lestrade and Sherlock continue to bicker. They are talking about Jennifer Wilson and her daughter, Rachel, when John tunes back in, chest tight from controlling his breathing. His left pectoral muscle keeps twitching just where it connects into the scarring and the steel. Slowly, he exhales, releasing his clenched fist.

“You need to bring Rachel in. You need to question her. _I_ need to question her.” Sherlock’s eyes are darting back and forth, and John wonders idly for a moment how many ideas he considers and discards per moment.

“She’s dead.” Lestrade’s shoulders are hunched, his mouth a grim line.

Sherlock’s face lights up. “Excellent!”

John snaps back to the present and looks, _really looks_ at Sherlock.

Sherlock, meanwhile, is carrying on, insisting on reasons and connections – even when the daughter turns out to be stillborn.

“Why would she do that? _Why?_ ” he demands.

Anderson’s lip curls in a sneer. “Why would she think of her daughter in her last moments? Yeah – _sociopath_ ; I’m seeing it now.”

“She didn’t _think_ about her daughter,” Sherlock retorts. “She scratched her name on the floor with her fingernails. She was dying. It took effort. It would have _hurt_.”

John watches Sherlock pace back and forth, taking long strides, like a great cat in a cramped cage. He itches to help, but he’s not great detective. Still, it can’t hurt to try. “You said that the victims all took the poison themselves, that he _makes_ them take it.” John frowns. “Well, maybe he ... I don’t know, talks to them? Maybe he used the death of her daughter somehow.” God, what a horrible thought – it’s almost enough to distract him from the renewed stares of certain Met officers, as if they’d forgotten he existed and had now been (unpleasantly) reminded of his presence.

“Yeah, but that was _ages_ ago. Why would she still be upset?”

The silence that descends is full of judgement. The whole room turns to stare at Sherlock the way they had been staring at John overtly, or covertly, it doesn’t matter. What matters is everyone (even Sally and Anderson) switches their attention to Sherlock, who leans closer to John, almost hesitant.

“Not good?” he asks, softly.

“ _Bit_ not good, yeah.”

Sherlock pauses for a moment in his prowling – seems to be considering John’s input – then carries right on. He looms closer, asking, “If you were dying ... if you’d been murdered: in your very last few seconds what would you say?”

“Please, God, let me live,” John answers calmly and without hesitation, but he cannot bury the emotion in his voice completely. For all that he’s staring at Sherlock as he says it, for all he’s noticing a flicker of feeling in those mercurial eyes, John can still see Donovan and Anderson at the corner of his sight. Anderson remains still, unaffected, but Donovan shifts uncomfortably and looks away from John, and Lestrade grunts and turns away. There’s something akin to shame in those small movements.

“Yes, but,” Sherlock breaks the spell, “if you were clever, _really_ clever – Jennifer Wilson running all those lovers: she _was_ clever. She’s trying to _tell_ us something.” He paces back and forth, raking his hands through his hair.

“Isn’t the doorbell working?” Suddenly, Mrs. Hudson is at the door to the living room. “Your taxi’s here, Sherlock.”


	9. A Study in Beginnings

It begins the way most things end: with a gunshot, a murder, a death.

There are the bits before the beginning (Sherlock swanning off in a taxi, Lestrade admitting that he barely knows the mad man, but that he thinks he is a _great_ man, that he could be a _good_ man, if luck has any play – and maybe there’s a hint of something there, an emotion that’s gone before John can parse it, when Lestrade admits to barely knowing –

Anderson sneering at him, eyes raking over John’s body as he turns to leave, and he can feel each lingering examination, of his neck, of his hands, his limbs, his joints, trying to find what shouldn’t be, _one of these things is not like the others_ –

Sally glancing at his face, turning away too quickly, leaving without comment –

And suddenly, John’s alone in the flat.) All those moments happened before the beginning, not unimportant, because they led to the beginning, but not defining, not _concrete_ like the beginning.

John, alone in the flat, still in that grey and ill-defined _before_ space, thinks of what has just happened, of Sherlock running off, of the interactions he’s just had to endure. He considers, clenches a hand, and turns to leave, already populating his future with empty days in his empty bedsit, jotting down empty words for his supervising therapist to fill with meaning.

He remembers his cane before he makes it past the door, and turns to look for it. His leg isn’t bothering him right now, but…well. Best to find it, keep it ready.

He spots it lying on a bunch of newspapers, envelopes, and hastily scribbled notes. John stares at the handwriting – it’s arrogant and sloppy and all over the place, and –

With an angry sigh (and why is he even angry? It’s not like things could have been any other way) John snatches up the cane, grabs his coat and is two steps from exiting the flat, when –

The laptop beeps. Search function completed. Location found.

John stops, turns, looks at the screen for a long moment. Slowly, as if he can frighten the moment away, he moves closer to the laptop. He’s doing his best not to listen to the litany of _What are you doing? Leave, leave while you can, before anything else happens_ and think clearly about what the laptop’s reporting.

A moment later, John is out the door, laptop in one hand, his right hand tingling oddly at the absence of his cane.

 

It takes a moment to flag down a taxi, and then John clambers inside, gives the destination, and sits back to watch the screen. After a moment, he fumbles out his mobile, hesitates, then dials.

The operator that answers is less than helpful, and after a few bouts of circular questioning, John grimaces and blurts out, “No, I just – please get Detective Inspector Lestrade. I _need_ to speak to him. It’s important. It’s an emergency!”

He takes a moment to redirect the cab driver, then gets back to waiting for a human voice on the other end of this (vital/idiotic) phone call.

And what if Lestrade answers? _Yes, hello, I’m the collection of scrap metal and meat you met earlier. According to my therapist I have six months at the outset, and then, well… you’ve heard the stories, haven’t you?_

_By the way, I have a loaded gun tucked into my trousers, and I’m on my way to find your pet detective._

When the operator tells him yet again that she cannot connect him through to Lestrade (maybe he’s gone home for the evening?) John accepts defeat and hangs up. More and more, John is realizing that he’s in this (for which the given value of _this_ is _the rest of his life_ ) on his own. No back up, no CO’s to help or hinder, and certainly no mates to lean on.

A few minutes later, the cab arrives at a large, impressive building. Great stonecut lettering heralds it as the ‘ _Roland-Kerr College.’_

John slowly exits and pays, trying to get a feel for this new terrain. The College has two main building entrances, and there is an abandoned cab parked precisely between the two of them. With a shake of his head and a snort of derision for himself, John, for the first time since he woke up four months ago, wishes he had _more_ augmentations.

He’s read about the vision enhancements they outfit certain specialists with (nothing so drastic or distasteful as his surgeries – these are voluntary and coveted procedures). Heat vision, infrared, and biometrics tracking would all have come in _extremely_ useful right about now.

With no other recourse or resource, John stands stock still for a few moments, feeling his metal move and flex with his breathing and his shifting weight. All John has is what he has, and while the materials have changed, the end product has not. John Watson is still just one man.

John picks an entrance and begins the search.

The interior of the college is dim and cool – the floors are slick and clean, as if cleaning crews have just been. The empty classrooms are finished in stone and wood and _money_. This is not a world John Watson ever walked, and he feels out of place here, at night, with gunmetal digging into his skin and Sherlock Holmes digging into his thoughts.

As he jogs, dutifully checking the classrooms as they flicker past, John thinks of what he’ll say when he sees Sherlock, finally. If he gets there in time, he should end their association. He should extricate himself from this…whatever this might become.

John is, himself, enough of a pariah now without an insane genius to attract more unwanted attention – and from police officers and inspectors, too. No good can come from being under such close scrutiny.

And if he doesn’t get there in time? Well…

John speeds up, and part of him is relishing this speed and urgency and how his body responds to it, to him – but that doesn’t dispel the strangling tightness in his chest, and he finally gives in and calls out, “Sherlock?”

No answer. John is running through the halls now, jacket flapping, feet and heart pounding. “Sherlock!”

Some doors are locked, some are not, all the rooms are empty, and at last, John spies a hint of movement to his left –

He bursts into the classroom, and his voice catches in his throat.

The movement he saw, the light –

They aren’t in this room. They are across the courtyard in the sister building. Sherlock is there, his tall, angular silhouette unmistakable, his dark coat and hair bracketing his pale face. With him is a shorter, portly man, so unassuming, but John knows all about seeming harmless, and his adrenaline is already boiling in his veins –

Sherlock is lifting something up – a pill bottle?

Something snaps inside John, cold and hot and _sudden_.

“ _SHERLOCK!_ ”

No use.

No use no use no use –

The heat in John’s blood and the chill in his gut die away – no; they trade places. He’s lifting the gun from its cradle of cloth with his right hand, the hand that held the cane, the hand that itches for a grip, and oh this is like coming _home_ –

_I won’t shoot. I won’t need to shoot; Sherlock won’t –_

But Sherlock _is_. He’s taken something from that bottle, held it to the light, and now, now, now he’s bringing it towards his parted lips.

For John, the world pitches grey and slow.

For John, it is the easiest, the rightest thing in the world to bring the gun to aim, to bring his thoughts to a point, his mind to a focus. His lungs inhale, and halfway through the exhale, they slow to a halt. His heartbeat is a warsong in his veins. Men have lived and died under his hands while he listened to that song.

He eases the trigger, and part of him knows this is all happening fast, and soon _he_ will have to happen fast, have to think fast, disappear, because this is murder and the courts will not see beyond his medical charts, but for now, for now, for now he can parse the world at leisure, feel the minute changes as the trigger slides back, as the point of no return is breached –

The gun leaps in his hand, like a hound to his master’s call –

Across the way, glass cries out at the intrusion of the round –

The bullet finds a home in the wooden door, but not before passing through the portly man. If John’s eyes are any judge, the shot will have impacted close to the heart, without directly damaging it. A bleed-out death – enough to distract Sherlock from the shooter, enough for John to make good his disappearance.

Somehow, distantly, through a fog of fast reactions and slow time, John feels the weight of what he just did. He had expected it to feel like finality, like the tying of a knot, but instead it feels like tugging at a bow, feeling it come undone between his fingers.

It feels like a beginning, in the exact way a gunshot, a murder, a death should not. Everything is fluid and ready to happen.

Things happen fast then (they always do, after) and John stays just long enough to visually confirm that his target is down, that Sherlock is unharmed, and then, before the detective can turn to seek him out –

John is gone.


	10. A Study in Going Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my birthday present to myself: my first longer, chaptered fic completed.

Going back.

Going back… John had not been intending to go back.

He’d made it out of the College, had been several streets away, leaning against a doorway in an alley, puffing white clouds of moisture into the night, clutching at his left shoulder, at the join between metal and flesh, at the sharp pain, like a stitch.

Too much running after months of limping – his body hadn’t had time to adjust, hadn’t had time to tweak its fascia and its ligaments, which meant that no mirror copy existed yet with which to program his left shoulder implant…

And, the weight of the shoulder assembly had been swaying uncomfortably with each stride, like a pendulum that got heavier the longer he ran.

The answer was to breathe, to calm down, to let his body work through it.

His legs seemed to be getting on well enough, though, but then, his leg isn’t a partial implant like his shoulder – they’d scooped out everything and given him what they called a ‘fresh start.’ _Much simpler this way,_ they’d said. _Less chance of a miscommunication_. Their faces had been grave. _We wouldn’t want a miscommunication…_

Well, with his shoulder aching this way, John is now much more inclined to agree.

John hadn’t intended to go back – but now, as his pulse calms and his scar tissue stops buzzing in his awareness, John finds his hands in his pockets and his feet on the path back to the College.

 

The Met has arrived in force by the time John strolls up. Do Not Cross tape cordons off the tarmac directly in front of the College, and John finds an out of the way corner to stand and watch the proceedings.

Faces he is starting to recognize dart back and forth with hardly a glance his ay – if John has anything going for him, it’s his ability to be effortlessly overlooked. His is not a face one remembers.

Donovan, especially, seems to be flitting about, coordinating the entire ballet of crime scene photographers, perimeter control, and medical personnel. It would be easy to be impressed by her unruffled authority if John hadn’t seen that façade slip earlier this evening.

Over by an ambulance, parked a little out of the way, sitting with his elbows propped on his knees and his chin propped on his interlaced hands, lost in thought, is Sherlock. John almost smiles, then stops himself, then spends a baffled moment wondering why that almost happened. Well. Sherlock is safe, and that could be reason enough.

He watches, unseen for the moment, aware that the longer he stays the more likely he’ll be noticed, and since he’s still carrying the bloody murder weapon…

But John allows himself the novel experience of observing Sherlock while himself safe from the intense visual dissection he’s come to associate with the man.

He’s no genius, but he does make note of a few details – details, judging by how others have and are treating him, that have gone uncatalogued:

Sherlock is too-thin, tired, and confused.

Considering what had nearly happened that night, John can’t say he blames him. Still, he watches as a helpful paramedic drapes a bright orange blanket around Sherlock’s shoulders. Sherlock shrugs the blanket off, but a few moments later, another helpful pair of hands settles yet another blanket on his frame. He glares at the retreating lad, then turns to address the approaching DI – and going on body language, the blanket is one of the things that has the great Sherlock Holmes confused.

 _Now,_ John thinks, clenching his left hand. _While he’s thoroughly distracted, and everyone is busy._ He’s come all this way, and he’s seen that Sherlock is safe, that the gunshot had the desired effect. The killer is down, and the mad man is unharmed –

And why is that so important?

As he watches, as he debates, Sherlock stands and begins talking animatedly _at_ Lestrade. John catches himself before he can grin. Only Sherlock could have someone expire right in front of him and be so unaffected –

But that’s not true at all. John spent the better part of a decade with a rotating team of men who all loosely fit that profile, and John himself, well… If Sherlock was the odd man out for witnessing a murder and remaining calm, what did that make John, the one who did the deed?

 _‘He’s turned cold so fast,’_ they’d said.

But they’d also said, _‘He went in that way.’_

It takes John a moment to realize that Sherlock is staring directly at him with his ‘dawning realization’ expression.

 _Bugger._ John meets his eyes for a moment, then turns to look at something else, trying to act natural, to exude ‘normal,’ to be as unnoticeable as possible. Even at this distance, he can tell he’s failed: Sherlock’s eyes narrow, but he turns and shakes his head, flapping his hand at Lestrade.

Running is useless now – John plants his feet, assuming parade rest.

Sherlock extracts himself from the DI’s persistence, and strides over to John, divesting himself of blanket as he approaches. When he reaches the car by John’s side, he bundles up the blanket and chucks it in through an open window. He comes right up to John and fixes him with a piercing look.

“I overheard some of the officers talking,” John says, breaking under the silence first. “Dreadful business,” he adds, because that’s what people say, isn’t it? “Dreadful.”

Sherlock doesn’t smile, but the quality of his expression changes for a moment. “Good shot,” he murmurs.

“Yes. Yes, must’ve been, through that window.” John crushes the tiny surge of pride.

“Well,” and Sherlock’s not-smile is even more evident now. “ _You_ ’d know.”

John doesn’t know how to navigate this conversation. This man, he decides, ought to come with a manual.

“We need to get the powder burns out of your fingers. I don’t suppose you’d serve much time for this, but the court case would get… ugly.” Sherlock looks down at John, searchingly, and even though Sherlock’s words kindle a kind of dread and weariness, reminding John of _different_ , he manages a quick nod. John clears his throat and glances around.

“Are you all right?” Sherlock asks, still a little close for personal space’s sake.

“Of course I’m all right.” Why wouldn’t he be?

“Well, you _have_ just killed a man.”

“Yes, I ...”

Sherlock is watching him closely, and John wonders if this is it, the moment Sherlock Holmes comes to his senses. He’s not going to keep an augmented veteran with PTSD around after all. The mad man is realizing how dangerous John could be, how _hazardous_.

“That’s true, isn’t it?” John asks softly.

“You’re worried. You shouldn’t be.” Sherlock blinks at him. “You were like this before the cyberthetics, before the surgeons got a hold of you,” Sherlock says, voice quiet, eyes intense, “before the war even. It’s why you joined, isn’t it? To find a place and purpose.”

 _This is Sherlock_ , John thinks, desperate for a moment to believe what has just been uttered. _He sees through everything and everyone…_ He wants Sherlock to have seen something, to have noticed something no one else – not even John – has noticed, to be so _certain_ of his deduction –

But Sherlock was wrong about Harry. _The statistics aren’t very kind. Not a very promising start._

John clenches his jaw. “That doesn’t change what –”

“What you are? Or what you did?” Sherlock’s mouth is a toothy slash in his pale face. “In my experience nothing can change those things.” His lips quirk. “Spare me the theatrics, please.”

John is done tempering his reactions for the night. “ _Spare me the theatrics?_ This from the man that nearly _killed himself out of boredom_ tonight?” John takes a deep breath, just barely remembering to keep his voice down, his gestures muted – as surrounded by cops as he currently is, it seems he’s not done filtering himself after all.

Sherlock arches an eyebrow at him.

“Fine,” John snaps. “Yes, I killed a man tonight, and yes, I’m alright.” He grimaces.

“And why is that, do you think?” There’s something jaunty in Sherlock’s voice. Even standing still, hands in pockets, there’s a _bounce_ to him.

John says the first thing that comes to mind: “Because he wasn’t a very _nice_ man.”

Sherlock regards him for a moment. “No. No, he wasn’t really, was he?”

John can’t stop himself from adding, “And frankly a bloody awful cabbie.”

Sherlock coughs out a surprised laugh. “That’s true. He _was_ a bad cabbie. Should have seen the route he took us to get here.”

Despite himself, John finds he is giggling. Which is ridiculous, but there it is. He glances over at where Donovan is standing, and gets grip of himself. Right – laughing at a crime scene isn’t going to earn him any ‘human points.’

Sherlock seems to find the disapproval carved into every line of Donovan’s being particularly entertaining. John realizes through his breathless laughter that they’ve started walking, side by side, away from the College – and when did that happen?

“Stop it, stop,” John mutters, swallowing what feels like a minor bout of hysterics. The thing about a minor bout of hysterics, though, is that it can become a major one with very little effort. “It’s a crime scene, we can’t –”

Sherlock snorts. “You’re the one who shot him. Don’t blame me.”

For a moment, panic fills John’s throat like rust. “ _Keep your voice down,_ ” he all-but-hisses.

Sherlock apologizes – well. He apologizes to Donovan, but John feels like it’s for him nonetheless. John mutters an apology, too, although it’s more than a little empty. John stopped needing to apologize to people like Donovan a long time ago, but he’s had plenty of chances to hone that skill these past four months.

Donovan watches them go, with a look on her face like she’s having a hard time deciding who to disapprove of more.

The thought is oddly comforting – until a less comforting one comes along:“You were going to take that damned pill, weren’t you?”

“Of course not,” Sherlock scoffed. “I was biding my time – knew you’d turn up.”

“I – _what_?” John gapes at him. “No you didn’t.” John covers his eyes with the palms of his hands in frustration, then lets his hands slide down. “Oh god, this is how you get your kicks, isn’t it? You risk your life to prove you’re clever.” John shakes his head. “I’m just another test, then, or what? You’re going to keep me around as a distraction until I snap and kill you? Is that it?”

Sherlock huffs. “Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re an idiot.”

The bastard grins at that, smile as wide as a crocodile’s. “Dinner?”

John can feel a smile threatening. “Starving.” He gives in to the grin when Sherlock’s face betrays his curiosity, those unanswered questions from Angelo’s.

 

Later, after Chinese, after _Mycroft_ – and he would have a name like that, wouldn’t he? – after walking the late night streets of London, after going home (home home _home_ ) to 221B, John is sitting in his new, empty bedroom, rubbing his shoulder, thinking about the gunshot that started it all.

The sound of it reverberates through every empty space, inside and out, not sinister but insistent.

Before all this, John had known gunshots to be finality, bullets at the ends of sentences, periods ending lives with the ease of years, decades, wars of practice.

In the dim, early morning light of London, of Baker Street, of 221B, John is learning they start lives as easily as they end them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now seems like a good time for some thanking:  
> Everyone who has read and commented – your responses mean so much. Thanks!  
> Invisible_cities: thank you for the wonderful insights and info-sharing – my brain is churning deliciously…  
> And I have to mention the awesome resource that made incorporating show-accurate dialogue so much less stressful: arianedevere.livejournal.com (found this blog while randomly searching for quotes… bookmarked now: thank you for existing)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover for Patternofdefinace's STATIC Series](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1908690) by [Cylin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cylin/pseuds/Cylin)




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